Son John Hooker was out for a short spell from the UK and it was magic to also have his brother Mike and himself along with spouses and kids in attendance. Mike was a Winston regular with Middle Phase in the early days.

Dave's friend Mark brought along a bunch of mementos and albums for the boys, along with a bunch of Dave's slope award pennants - thanks for all you have done, Mark :-)

A big thanks also to Luke of Flightpro for doing the quad honours and lifting and dropping the ashes, with assistance from Dean and Rocky. Rocky lead the group in short prayer before the ashes were airlifted.

This first video shows Luke's quad taking off and dropping the ashes:

John and Mike with their respective spouses and lightie.

Much of the mob that came along in the mild and pleasant conditions for the send off.

John and Mike with big Russ and Rocky - thanks guys!

Whoops camera man Dave got the hats off throw ill timed for the pic but it looked pretty special in real time :-)

John holding one of the number of Dave's aeries restored by Lyndon Shorer right foreground - Mark on the left.

Dean and Luke testing and sorting the release box.

Luke and Rocky loading the ashes ahead of the airlift.

This video shows some after play with Bill's foamy glider towed up by Luke's quad.

Bill's foamy with a final pass after a pleasant airlift and flight by the quad:

26 November 2017

Dave Hooker was bravely on his way to another of his beloved annual pilgrimage Hermanus Slope Fly events at the tender age of 84 when he died in a motor accident.

Dannis Bird and Dave Greer hooked up again with blast from the past slope flyers Rocky Naidoo and Charles Moller at the Cremation farewell yesterday. The face open casket walk was like a punch to the chest as reality hit hard.

Mark had been taking care of Dave in recent times and had organised Pastor Joe who gave a thought provoking sermon that had a us all going as we stepped up to pay tribute. Charles reminded of Durban's biggest slope event travel to 1989 PE slope Nats, after he had teamed up with Dave on many RC slope and thermal cross country adventures.

Dave was instrumental in starting countless newbie model fliers off into the adventure that is our pastime. Russ has it in mind to do a slope session in memory of Dave and Rob Pirie who also passed away tragically, recently. Simon Pfotenhauer also organised the Hermanus slope event folk to do a special fly bye in memory of Dave.

Dave had quite an extended family but we fliers only really got to know Annie, Mike and Johnny, condolences to all of the family.

Pastor Joe about commence proceedings

The evergreen Charles Moller with Dennis Bird and Barry Lombard in the background

17 July 2017

Went searching for some old Southern Soaring Club Southeaster stuff and realised the stuff lost through a computer change at the time seemed trivial but now quite a biggie..... The web site per thumbnail used to be the SSC webs site and location of some history, alas now defunct.Update: I am indebted to Peter Beretta for this extremely useful ink:2005 to 2008 copy Southeasters

Russ recently sent me this pic of the Gary Boase refurbished Russ Karos (Karo Ace of Diamonds) that set our Kzn slope world alight in the late eighties and still to me remains the most iconic pure slope soarer of all time. I debated storing on FB for posterity but then decided to keep the filing cabinet blog ticking over with these special pics.

Gary Boase with the refurbished Russ Karos.

Time warp back to last century and Russ launching the Karos beastie at Key Ridge (Cliffdale), this pic shows the classic lines of the Karo Ace of Diamonds to great effect :-).

04 January 2016

Lance recently offered to make a version of his little snapper dapper solid balsa wing twist pitcheron sloper (the blitz'est rat up a drainpipe ever) and I countered by saying I had saved the Proton plan for an eventual project, resized down by a third and to be converted to twist twist (wingeron with all moving tailplane) instead.

At the same time I did a bit of Googling and was disappointed at how this amazing series of slopers was disappearing in to the sands of time, which meant getting back to this online "filing cabinet" to keep the "spirit" alive! I had so much pleasure out of my original Poltergeist converted to low wing and which later sparked nine versions of my own solid balsa wing Bandit, appearing at Springfield in various guises, over time.

Alas I have lost the Poltergeist and Protean plans but still have the original sold balsa wing shaping article, Proton plan and magazine extract of the Super mite, of which a few local versions were built without solid balsa wing, as per link below:

Here is a cell shot of the scaled down Proton plan. Lance has a thing about Samurai style wings and internal bellcranks so the final product will be somewhat different but still with enough of the John E Foster fuselage styling left. ;-)

06 February 2013

According to this excellent UK forum post, just by picking the correct two of the six free mixers, one is able to program to Spektrum Dx7 for crow (butterfly), full trailing edge aileron and full trailing edge camber for a four servo wing utilizing a 6 channel receiver:

Had a bit of luck - well a lot of luck
really- in setting up my Typhoon slope soarer in that I managed to achieve crow
breaking, ailerons moving with flaps for full wing camber, and flaps moving
with ailerons for increased roll rate.

There was one puzzling thing
which worked very much to my advantage so today I "borrowed" the
receiver and battery from my Fusion and investigated.

Programmable mixes 5 and 6 are
different to 1, 2, 3 & 4 in that the trim levers will adjust both the
master and slave servos.

There is another benefit of this
feature.

With a mix set up on either 5 or 6, and
a further mix on 1, 2 , 3 or 4 set up with the master of the first mix as
slave, then both master and slave of the first mix are activated by the second
mix.

As an example, the flaps of my slope
soarer are set up on the throttle and gear channels with p-mix 5 linking them
together (throttle master and gear slave) so that both flaps move from
the throttle stick.

The ailerons are set up as flaperons so
that they work off the three position flap switch to alter wing camber.

I have p-mix 2 with flap master
to throttle slave which links the ailerons (working as flaperons on flap
channel) to flaps (on throttle and gear channels) to give full wing camber.

Because the throttle and gear are
linked on p-mix 5, and p-mix 2 has the throttle (p-mix 5 master) as
slave, both flaps move together.

I originally discovered this by pure
accident and it saved me a very valuable p-mix.

It only works if the first p-mix is on
5 or 6 and the second p-mix is on 1, 2, 3 or 4.

18 January 2013

This just had to prompt a these days rare blog post for me. Some may recall the post below and Vic Schroeder kindly following up the the much needed information regarding "Lowrider", including a copy magazine lead, which culminated in me sourcing the magazine and plan for a one day scale to RC project...... To me this is the ultimate beauty in aircraft, no matter if originally penned as a free flight model.

Now, consider that this was penned in 1987 by the designer as a free flight cartoon scale version of the Loving WR1 racer, below, heavily influenced by the Peter Fonda movie "lowrider". The magazine plan article is a joy to read never mind anything else.....

The Loving has indeed been scaled to RC flight but it is Lowrider I one day wanted to catch the essence of, so you can imagine my gob is well and truly smacked to find out full size beat me to it, two and a half decades later!

08 January 2013

The priest did quite a superb job of weaving his sermon in to the wonders of thermal soaring at the Kzn commemorative service, yesterday. The biggest impact for me was just how incredibly brave Mike had been during his decade long battle with cancer, even undertaking marriage to Ruth recently.

The Cape link is worth a mention for the present NvS slope combatants. Mike scooped the South African F3B thermal soaring title down in Cape Town in 1981, as a teenager, nogal. Mike also went to the F3B thermal soaring world championship and it is commendable that he did both with his OWN designs and OWN builds, the Witblitz glider going on to be a local Kzn legend. Probably a gross generalisation from my side but it was pretty close to three decades before Kzn folk Messrs Russ Conradt and Michel Leusch got to scoop some silverware off the Cape Peninsula, again!

On a lighter note, it was not a small shock to see "young" Ron Uken reading one of Mike's eulogies from Mike's sister, having last have seen Ron with a shock of blonde hair - he now having joined the ranks of us grey haired ole geezers (sorry Ron ;-)

03 September 2012

BBM and Facebook have tended to supersede the blog because of the immediacy of reporting but this was special exception for us. Dave heads in to hospital today for some major surgery and asked his mate Alfred for a special day's flying on Saturday, ahead of the op. Of course, like the advert says, Alfred talked to his mates and they talked to their mates and we ended up with a good mob up Ziggynanda on Saturday afternoon.

Messages had been coming from far and wide, starting with Simon, Wessie and Bruce in the Cape, through to Shaun in Pretoria, Rob Rowe in KZN and this final very special one for Dave, from Mike Abramson:

Hi Dave, Russ, Rob, Old friendsBrings back many fond memories

•many, many hours building - late at night in his garage•sunburst solarfilm - he is the master•my first bad finger cut with a scalple, & he cyno'd it shut•remember Oros, the sagitta eaters, middle phase 1.5, etc etc•and of course, his dry humourPlease pass our best wishes to Dave Hooker. BrgrdsMike & Julie

What follows is a rogues gallery of those enjoyed some magic sloping and chatting to ole Dave.

More from Russ regarding the Dave Hooker Fly and Braai:

What promised to be a great day, delivered 100%, despite
cool cloudy conditions, there was more than enough lift available for the die
hards, who made the trip to Hooker's, Fly and Braai!

Dave H was in his element! He sat on the tailgate of
Alfred's bakkie and flew his beloved Radian Pro, for what seemed ages. Man if
Dave couldn’t break the wings on Saturday, they bent, flexed and I swear he
nearly got the wing tips to touch! Lots of excitement was provided by all, from
re-maidens that went all wrong, tx being "launched", and Sd'ing,
landing out, landing down and breakages.

It really was nice to see Grant, Paul Boswara, and Brad
Conlon again, and I am sure with what they saw, it is only a matter of time
before they arrive at Winston with something to fly. Paul's questions along the
lines of, "this 2.4 thingy, is it ok and how do I make a Shongololo strong
and ballast it", proves that once a Sloper, always a sloper!

Stan was dying to maiden his Minivec, but had his fair share
of drama, and sanity prevailed while trying to get the range sorted. With all
his walking and range checking, I joked that with Futaba, you "walk less
and Fly more".

Dave, what can I say except, till you have flown a Flight
Pro Swift, you are losing out! The orange bullet tore up the sky like it had a
rocket up its “ask your mother for sixpence”. I said Dave wasn't going to be
able to wipe that smile off his face for a week. He also proved that Swifts
really don't need guidance when landing! And they survive and come back
unscathed. Rumour has it that Dave went to church twice on Sunday!

Dean have great fun with his Swift and Luna, another Flight
Pro model which has huge potential. He also has a winch that has my right arm,
8 inches longer than my left after launching myself of the side of ZN. The
amount of kak down the front of the slope is amazing, makes Springfield look
like a Hospital Theatre!

Luke impressed no end with the Rare Bear, which should be
renamed Barney in its purple drab, man it goes like stink, his Radiant was
impressive to say the least, and a serious contender in Open at the end of the
month. The Nelson clan arrived and both Sy and Ry put the Weaver through its
paces showing that it has some serious aerobatic ability. Mark had his Minivec
up and showed a lot more confidence compared to when he flew it at the Toss event
in January.

We rounded off the day with a Braai and I can assure you,
there was a lot of chatting, all good, and all too soon, it was time to head on
home.

Dave Hooker is a legend, we are hoping for the best, one
thing is for certain, he will be in good hands at Albert Luthuli.

Dave had a very negative outlook last time we were at ZN,
but after Saturday, and seeing how much he is loved by all, should give him the
strength to fight back, and get out on the hill soon.

Till then, Mr H, hang in there, we are counting on you.

Regards

Russ Conradt

Russ suckering us all good with the hand launch transmitter ;-)

East Coast slopers just chilling and chatting, Mark Phillips with Dave Hooker, sitting on the afore-mentioned tailgate.

Russ's view of the East Coast Rockers :-)

Most of the mob who braved the chilly afternoon.

Men of the hour, Dave Hooker and good friend Alfred

Dave Hooker and young Jade Persson, son of Frank.

Rudi Smook and Mig - thanks for the shelter Rudi!

Mark Phillips and Dean Halley.

Lionel Smith and Rudi

Saudi Arabia's Johan de Lange and classic Ellipse 1, down from Pietermaritzburg.

Adriaan, also down from Pietermaritzburg.

Sean Oellermann.

Dave's legendary "Sagitta Eater"!

Dean Halley and Luke Johnson.

Fearless ECSS leader and braai man Russ Conradt, a fraction before he terrified most of us by hurling the dummy transmitter instead of the JW60!

Luke Johnson, Paul Boswarva and Brad Conlon.

Stan Haussman and Mark Phillips.

Stan with with the as yet un-maidened Minivec.

Paul Young, Russ Conradt and Glen Pyle - special thanks to Paul and Glen for making the trip.